Political-social rants mid-2016

You may have been wondering, if you followed my blog, “Where did that overly-opinionated guy Mark get to?” (Or, you may have been saying “Thank heavens he’s stopped writing that rant-y blog.”)

Heh-heh. Though I’ve been remiss about blogging on this site (and very remiss about writing the rest of the darn book which title is also the title of this site, and the other book, and the short stories…), I have been far from silent on the various socio-econo-politico-clusterfraks going on in our world. The global economic crisis (which is still happening for most of the 99% at least in some spheres of our lives), the US elections, Brexit and its transatlantic and global implications, inequality, general malfeasance of the elites, and my eclectic perspective of being sort-of-libertarian on some things, raging-socialist on others, and even some traditional-conservative on role-of-government and fiscal policy, while having progressive views on social issues. (That’s because there is more than just a “left-right” political dimension, and even that single x-axis goes out a lot further “left” and “right” than USA-ians believe, and a typical “US liberal” is actually “center-right” by most of the developed and highly-developed developing world.)

Let me (re-)introduce you to my social media public rantspaces:

My Twitter (@mcmxs because those are my initials and I do things to excess. Also because long ago I used Salomon XScream skis.)

For those of you who are all “I don’t do Twitter”, “I don’t use Google+”, “Don’t make me join something”, “Isn’t Google+ still dead?”, “Nope nope nope they violate all my privacy” – FFS they are also Just A Website. You don’t have to “join” to read – which is why my most important commentaries begin on G+ and/or the Tweety-box. Just click the darn link to the story, or go to google.com/+MarkMercer and twitter.com/mcmxs and read away. You can even have adblockingthings and privacytrackerblockers with Block All The Things settings, as long as you don’t have them so insane-paranoid set to block Twitter when you are already on twitter.com or block Google when you are already on Google! I like the adblocky-things, I use them, I just linked to a bunch of them, and if you hover over the links you’ll even see a short write-up of exactly what they are and why I like them. But let’s be serious – if you’re on Twitter itself, you kinda-probably want to unblock Twitter for use on Twitter.com itself, mmkay? Same for Facebookistan ant the Googleplex when you’re in such places. Otherwise it’s like you just rented a hotel room and then deliberately threw away your hotel key while you’re outside your room.

I do need to get back to long-form and medium-form writing, on my websites and in actual stories, articles, books, rather than “everything starts on social media”. But everything needs to get to, and/or from, social media anyway. My balance of origins for such things has weighed perhaps too heavily onto the “Start on Social” side, whereas a year or two back, I was in the “If I start writing more than one 5-sentence paragraph on social media, stop and do a website post instead and then share it.” Fine-tuning time, but it’s all ultimately connected.

Thank you for reading and commenting on my thoughts, insights, ridiculous ideas, outrageous rants, or whatever you might consider them. And wherever you might find them! As long as you don’t get into blatant hate-isms (non-“politically-correct”, scoff-at-“microaggressions” is just fine and in fact encouraged), your comments are welcome – in the Disqus comment section here, as a followup comment on a Facebook post, a reply Tweet, a Google post comment. I am happy to entertain respectful, yet even forcefully-argued “frank and open” discussion.

But not with deliberately-stupid or deliberately-evil people. And not with any of the following (non-exclusive illustrative) list: Chemtrails believers. Smartmeter-fearers. Moon-landing-deniers. Reptillian conspiracy-believers (Remember, there are FOUR types!) People who post links from “Natural News”, “InfoWars”, or similar sites, for any purpose other than blistering ridicule. People who believe things from those sites. People who say, “All opinions are valid” when some are clearly utter ignorance, which includes opinions of anti-vaxxers and anthrocentric climate change deniers. People who use nasty and counter-to-own-purposes terms like “Dumbocrat”, “ReTHUGlican”, “0bama” (as in, the numeral Zero instead of letter-O), “Obummer”, “Killary”, “Mittens” (for Romney), “Drumpf” (No, that’s NOT his name any more than your name is what your foreign ancestors used in a different language if it differs from your current name.) People who are prone to using “sheeple” without irony.

In other words, No nasty ignorant asshats. Everyone else welcome. You have a different but thoughtful opinion than I on gun control? Fire away. Are more or less socialistic, more or less libertarian, more or less pretty-much-anything than I am? Fair game, let’s get into it.

Of course, to do any of those things, you will have to “join the evil network” and do at least some type of validation that you are not a random evilbot. Because there’s already too much comment-sewage in the inter-tubes to encourage more.

Why can’t you post as a random-anon-drive-by? Because, Private Sector, Private Property, Small-L libertarian Freedom of Choice. My site, my social networks, and the more-restrictive of the union of their and my policies. Facebook, Google, Disqus, Twitter – all “private companies” as in “private sector rather than government-owned” regardless of whether or not they are a “private company” or a “public company” and I really wish you’d all understand that too! Especially before the next “Facebook Privacy Notification” hoax-post epidemic. So your “freedom of speech” goes only as far as I, Zuck, Sergey & Larry, Jack, and whoever-the-heck owns Disqus, decides it does. And that is indeed The American Way! (As well as EU Way, UK Way, all those “democracies”-ways, whether said representative democracies have the forms of republics or monarchies.)

Oh, who else isn’t welcome to post? People who have posted their own, public or accessible-to-me as “Friend” or “Friend of Friends” posts, and then got annoyed when I gave them enough respect to take their public post seriously, as an opportunity to engage in serious commentary on what they just posted! And including in that “taking seriously to discuss further” their public or same-friends-of-friends posting history as a gestalt about their positions, showing deeper respect that I did, indeed, Pay Attention to them as Serious People. Special place in internet-hell for those hypocrites. And plonk straight onto my blocklist at first whine.

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Owner SouthernCrossWeb.com & UruguayExpat.Info. Expat in Uruguay, Former Corporate Tool, former ski-bum. Known around web as MarkXS, fuzzy, the Fuzzy Wanderer, Marcos Cristoforo, or xenoc_1 depending on site/forum/blog.

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